I’m beginning with the only one I’ve read from this second instalment of April paperbacks. Narrated by the self-deprecating Rocky, Catherine Newman’s Sandwich spans a week in the holiday let she and her husband have rented for almost twenty years. They and their grown-up children cram themselves into the tiny cottage, joined later by Rocky’s parents. It’s a holiday like any other over the past two decades but by the time the family goes their separate ways, secrets will have been revealed, an understanding that some things must end gained and the joy of new beginnings embraced. A thoroughly enjoyable novel, and that cover is so much better than the hardback edition’s.
For some reason, I missed Elizabeth O’Connor’s Whale Fall when it was first published. Set in 1938, it follows Manod who is contemplating what to do with her future when two anthropologists arrive on the Welsh island where she lives. As she becomes involved in their work and their odd relationship, the outside world takes on a dark tinge. ‘Elizabeth O’Connor’s beautiful, devastating debut Whale Fall tells a story of longing and betrayal set against the backdrop of a world on the edge of great tumult’ says the blurb promisingly.
Defne Suman’s Summer Heat begins in 1974, the year Turkish troops occupied Cyprus, when Melike is a child frightened by her parents whispering about the turn events have taken. Not long after they move to a village in the south of the island, her father disappears. Three decades later, she meets a man whose true identity reveals past secrets further unsettling a life with which she might have expected to be happy. ‘Summer Heat explores family secrets, tangled identities and one woman’s place in her country’s devastating history’ according to the blurb. It’s the setting that interests me with this one.
I’m not much of a crime fiction fan as regular readers will know but as a keen follower of Susie Dent on social media, I can’t resist her first novel, Guilty by Definition, which sees an anonymous letter delivered to the Clarendon English Dictionary hinting at secrets and lies linked to a particular year in which the new senior editor’s sister disappeared. Martha and her team become embroiled in a troubling mystery as more letters arrive. I’m expecting some enjoyable lexicographical fun with this one.
April’s second paperback short story collection is by another writer who’s a dab hand with words. I’d want to read Eley Williams’s Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good for its title alone even if I hadn’t loved The Liar’s Dictionary. Williams explores relationships – both intimate and transient – in stories which range from a teenager’s crush on a saint to an essayist annotating thoughts on Keats using internet sex-tips. ‘Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good hums with fossicking language and ingenious experiments in form and considers notions of playfulness, authenticity and care as it holds relationships to account: their sweet misunderstandings, soured reflections, queer wish fulfilments and shared, held breaths’ says the blurb. I’m sure it will be brilliant.
That’s it for April. A click on a title will take you either to my review or to a more detailed synopsis should you want to know more, and if you’d like to catch up with part one it’s here. New fiction is here and here.
